Finding Value in My Company
April 20, 2016 by Mark Wilcox
For the past six months, I’ve been asking myself these two questions:
What is the driving force behind my company?
Why will people pay money to my company over someone else’s?
There’s confirmation on a giant sticky notepad sitting in front of me that I’ve at least been asking the right questions. Instructor Sandy Hessler has drawn a big sun on the whiteboard. In the middle are two words:
Values.
Core essence.
Even with the words there, I imagine the sun is smiling. It has to be to project all the good things that sunny company has to be involved with to shine.
- Place.
- Price.
- Publicity.
- People.
- Products.
- Marketing.
- Competition.
What will drive people to me? What will drive my company to people?
I’ve just learned something integral to my business. At the boiling-flame central core of my business, I need something that can radiate warmth through all of those channels. I need an essence that can drive me to continue competing when it seems hopeless. I need a story. Values. An essence that can be bottled, sold and spoken of in awe. ”
What will drive people to me? What will drive my company to people?
Values.
Core essence.
If I can’t radiate those like heat and light from a burning ball 2.7 million miles around, my company has already lost.
The picture is simple, but it contains a lot of information to drill into.
Sitting here and hearing it makes it personal. Something I need to achieve. The cogs are rotating in my head about how it all connects to my company.
The lesson is universal, but sitting in a room with like-minded people has a sort of synergy to it. We can all sense the need to seed these thoughts into our own companies so they can grow.
It’s day one of the Start-Up Institute, and the personal epiphanies for my business are starting to flow.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I jumped off of a Start-Up Instituteto pursue this program and this company – Sheen Startups LLC. And even though I have a vision and a destination in mind, much of the alphabet is lost to me between A and Z.
But things like this smiley-not-smiley sun on the board are helping me find B. And the program has only just begun.
Visit the Start-Up Institute for more information on the program.